The company, well known for its experiments involving corporate
culture, has been transitioning to a self-management
organizational structure known as Holacracy since 2013. Entering
this year, about 85% of the company had made the transition.

Hsieh sent a nearly 5,000-word company-wide
memo in late March that explained that any employee who was
not satisfied with the transformation by April 30 could leave
with three months' severance. The memo was leaked by
Quartz and later published by Zappos on its Insights
blog.

"Having one foot in one world while having the other foot in the
other world has slowed down our transformation towards
self-management and self-organization," Hsieh wrote.

To get their severance, employees had to be in good standing with
the company. They were also asked to indicate by email that they
had read the management book "Reinventing
Organizations" and disagreed with its manager-free vision or
else state that they were not reading it. According to the book's
author, Frederic Laloux, about 600 to 700 employees downloaded a
free e-book version that was linked in Hsieh's email.

John Bunch, technical adviser at Zappos and leader of the
Holacracy transition, pointed out to Business Insider shortly
before the April 30 deadline that the memo's severance-package
offer raised many questions among employees about what the
company's future looked like and that those questions still
existed.